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An anonymous reader writes "It seems as if the MySQL author is trying hard to win back control over MySQL. In his blog he calls upon the MySQL users to 'Help keep the Internet free' by signing his petition. He fears that if Oracle buys Sun they automatically get MySQL which would spell doom for the project. But I have have mixed feelings with this call for help, because after all — who sold MySQL in the first place?"

The main difference IIRC is that you actually have to enable postmaster to take connections, instead of being locked down by default. I'm glad it's locked by default myself, but there's people that don't want to read any documentation.

Postgres is a freaking enterprise database. Its documentation is so good, it makes every other framework in my development stack look bad. But people complain because they'd rather have the easy things be trivial, without caring about the difficulty of the not so easy things.

We also run MySQL at work, and we have a whole lot more problems with it. The developers, who were the ones that chose MySQL in the first place, are considering a switch to Postgres, based on how fewer headaches we get with our Postgres installations.

Postgres is a freaking enterprise database. Its documentation is so good, it makes every other framework in my development stack look bad. But people complain because they'd rather have the easy things be trivial, without caring about the difficulty of the not so easy things.

Some people just want their sql enabled php/java webmail app to be able to store and retrieve address book entries and what not. Should we have to become db gurus just to support such a tiny function of one of our applications? Or just to run a BBS, ahem, sorry, I mean *forum*?

There is a finite amount of time in a lifetime. If all of us had to become an expert on every god damn piece of software we ever touch, we'd all be broke, starving, and near death. Some software, especially support software (which

And that's what i tried to make my point, and being modded troll & flamebait for that.

Added complexity adds time required to manage and get familiar, and time being a finite resource...

That goes for code as well i have to maintain: I'll take slow & easy to maintain piece of code anyday over infinitely superior code in every other segment.Faster to maintain = More work done any given day, and how much i get work done is what i'm getting paid for, not the time spent on the task.

What do I mean by this? Well have you noticed how there has been endorsement of the apache license for proprietary software as of late? Basically anything proprietary that is labeled open source will be due to apache license compatibility? That's not to promote apache, that's to dilute it. MS-PL is an easy example of that.

These days, most new sites developed by sensible developers are built on FLPP (FreeBSD/Lighttpd/PostgreSQL/Python) or FNPP (FreeBSD/Nginx/PostgreSQL/Python) stacks.

I suspect that LAMP still makes the majority, though, it's just that you've conveniently sneaked up the word "sensible" here, which is of course defined by you as "using the technology I believe to be appropriate".

Meanwhile, the mention of FreeBSD there already makes me go "huh?". Not even to mention non-Apache web servers, and Python over PHP (I wholeheartedly wish PHP to die a quick death, but at this point, for web development at least, it is clearly more popular than Python by any measure).

We've been happy with Firebird. A few years ago, I was looking to port some 40K lines of Embedded SQL from Oracle to an open source database. MySQL had fees for commercial use, and at that time PostgreSQL lacked the transaction management we required (it may now, but it certainly did not then). The port to Firebird 1.5 when smoothly, and subsequent upgrades a have been painless. It's simple to install, simple to manage.

If you go to a pizza joint and order a buffalo chicken style pizza with tender chicken breast, hot sauce, and onions with provolone and American cheeses on a cheddar crust, and eat it with a big glass of mountain dew, you can't just go back and say "Now that I think of it, I would rather have had Hawaiian style pan-pizza with sliced ham, bacon, pineapple and roasted red peppers with provolone cheese on a parmesan crust". You've made your deal already. If you want an another pizza, you have to buy it again.

More like breaking up with his wife, signing the divorce papers and custody agreements, but now she wants to move to another state where access to his kids will be far more difficult. Because Monty went with the dual licensing model, he thought he could retain his business model as well.

This is _exactly_ the sort of wanting to have your cake and eat it, too, model that the GPL helps _avoid_. The situation is in fact mislabeled as a GPL issue. It was the dual model, GPL for the core and BSD for business vent

It was the dual model, GPL for the core and BSD for business ventures model that Sun used and that Monty's later business ventures are based on, and that is now at risk.

Minor nitpick, but it wasn't BSD for businesses. The BSD license permits sublicensing - you can redistribute under the same terms that you received - while the MySQL commercial license does not. If it did, then there would be no problem. One of the commercial customers could simply release the code under the BSDL and everyone could use their fork.

Bad for the selling software part of business, perhaps, but good for the buying and using software part of business. Which is the vast majority of businesses. So if you want to generalize, the GPL is without a doubt great for business.

If one could feed a family

Anything that helps you cut costs makes it easier to feed a family. Profitability has two parts, not only revenue but also expenses.

Why would anyone... use a license that undermines their business?

Because it simply doesn't undermine most businesses. It undermines a few business models based completely on monopoly rights, but for most businesses software or software development is simply a cost centre. They get a higher profitability by cutting the costs and using (and/or modifying and/or producing) GPL software than they would by taking the whole cost themselves and having to increase revenue elsewhere.

Microsoft would probably have a hard time switching over to the GPL+services model as they've accumulated so much fat from living in a high-margin uncompetitive segment for so long they'd get a corporate aneurysm if they actually had to shed that fat. But Microsoft is hardly the average company in the computing industry.

Q: Didn't you sell MySQL to Sun? Do you want to have the cake and eat it too?

First a little background:

I started to work on a code that would later become MySQL in 1982. MySQL was released in 1995 under a dual licensing scheme that allowed David Axmark and me to very quickly work full time on developing MySQL.

I lost the rights to the MySQL copyright in 2001 when MySQL AB was created and we allowed investors to come in. We needed to bring in investors to be able to create a full-scale working company to satisfy big customers and to be able to hire more developers and take MySQL to the next stage. To ensure that MySQL would continue to be free, David and I stated in the shareholder agreement that MySQL AB would have to keep MySQL under an open source license. The problem with a shareholder agreement is that it is terminated when the company is sold. This is just how things works.

David and I however thought that this would not be a problem, as we would help ensure that MySQL would be bought by a good owner.

I continued to lead the MySQL project and have been one of the leaders and top contributors for the project since then.

When the sales process to Sun started, I was at the time not anymore in the MySQL Board (just a MySQL shareholder). I was just informed about the deal, after it was agreed to. I did get money for my shares, that is true, but it did not change in any way my dedication or involvement in the MySQL project.

David and I however thought that this would not be a problem, as we would help ensure that MySQL would be bought by a good owner.

So it was really short-sighted thinking. They should had have some clause that limits how MySQL project would be possibly resold, or not sell the company at all, because its pretty clear that the project could be resold or go along with larger corporate overtakes. It's happened hundreds of times. They got to have known this.

Do you think they would have been able to get the investment if they had stipulated that the company couldn't be sold? I'm sure they realised that there were risks in taking the path they took; but that was the cost of being able to afford enough developers to keep MySQL competitive.

Basically Monty fell into the classic pitfall technical people with great ideas fall into. In order to have the successful project they need money. Money in these situations typically comes from venture capital firms (investors). The stated strategy of many firms is to remove the founders (in particular when they come from a technical background) from the business side of the organization. Once a VC and their slate of investors is on the board with a significant share of the equity the downfall of the f

I have to step in and say something here. If at any point in the 90s or early oughts... even up to 2004, you'd considered dropping in the ability to do hot DB dumps without table locking, you would have very likely gotten bigger than Oracle. (Much as Linux has gotten bigger than Solaris). It was idiocy of you not to do so, in favor of... god only knows what.And now frankly its too little, too late. MYSQL is pretty ok for a light-to-medium duty database, but you guys have had a couple of decades to really

Background: MySQL is an open-source database used by millions. Originally developed by closely-held Swedish company MySQL AB, it was sold to Sun Microsystems Inc in January 2008. Sun is now in the process of being acquired Oracle Corporation. The deal is still awaiting European regulatory approval.

Not happy with selling MySQL AB to Sun for a cool billion, Monty Widenius is now trolling regulators, the media, and anyone who will listen in his efforts to get back control of "his" database (without having to give back the money).

European regulators still don't "get" the open-source software model

The Europeans are holding up their approval of the Sun-Oracle deal because of concerns that the acquisition will reduce competition in the database industry. Oracle Corp, which is already the dominant player in large-scale corporate databases, already "controls" several open-source database products such as Oracle Berkeley DB and the InnoDB transactional storage engine for MysQL

The reason I put "controls" in quotes is because it's very difficult to actually exert full control an open-source project, especially one that is licensed under the GPL or similar open-source license. It would probably be more accurate to say that Oracle "sponsors" both BerkeleyDB and InnoDB.

It's all about being an unabashed hypocrite

Widenius was originally able to control MySQL by insisting that the copyright for all code contributed by outsiders be assigned to MySQL AB. By doing this, Widenius was able to "dual-license" MySQL, with both a free GPL version and a paid commercial version.

This licensing scheme was good enough when Widenius was in control of MySQL AB, but now that Oracle is buying Sun, suddenly Widenius wants both the licensing scheme changed to something that would allow his new company to sell modified copies without having to release the source code for their changes, and to have Oracle turn over control of MySQL to someone other than Oracle - perhaps the EU should consider (nudge nudge, wink wink) his new company, Monty Program AB?

Calls the GPL licensing scheme an "infection", wants the EU to violate international treaties

You can read more [groklaw.net] about the attempt to get the Europeans to retroactively change the licensing scheme from the GPL to something more "Monty Widenius-friendly":

We would like to draw attention to the fact that some major concerns about the effects of the proposed transaction could be somewhat alleviated by requiring that all versions of MySQL source code previously released under the GPLv2 license (whether in a General Availability, Release Candidate, Beta, Alpha release, or as public bazaar or bitkeeper revision control trees) must be released under a more liberal open source license that is usable also by the OEM users and would also create an opportuity for other service vendors to compete with offerings comparable to MySQL Enterprise.

In other words, he wants the European Union to violate Articles 9 and 12 of the Bern Convention on Copyrights and retroactively change the license from the GPL, which requires him to share any changes he makes to source code covered by the GPL, to a license that would let him take from the original authors, but not give back anything in return.

The "copyleft/infection" principle of the GPL license represents a particular obstacle not only to revenue generation by the fork vendor but also to the overall adoption and market penetration of MySQL, MySQL forks and MySQL storage engines....

When we were kids, our parents told us "share and share alike." The authors who contributed source code under the GPL adhered to this principle. If you don't want to share your changes, simply don't "borrow" their

It's not as if he was unaware of the danger of the death of free software.

The supposed death of free software and a "free internet" is just the distraction he's trying to use. MySQL is open source. Even if Oracle relicenses future releases of MySQL under terms that are less free, we still have the same MySQL as we've always had with the same free terms. If it were ever to be an issue, a fork would happen immediately and/or we'd see increased use of PostgreSQL. Either way, the "internet" will be kept free regardless. I don't know much about Monty, but my prejudgment is that he's slime.

...except that if Oracle owns the copyrights to MySQL, they can close source future versions of MySQL and/or let mainline development languish. I don't know if they also own the name "MySQL" but if they do they can forbid any forks of MySQL from being called "MySQL" as well.

Of course, the existing source will live forever, but any forks will not have the advantage of the "MySQL" brand name or the ability to dual-license the code for situations where more restrictive licensing might be desired by their customers.

It's kind of surprising how few people realize this disadvantage of the GPL. Keep that in mind the next time you use it on a project.

So I'm curious - what license does a better job at this than the GPL? What license specifically provides access to a trademark and negates dual-licensing? Or was dual-licensing the advantage? You know - the advantage of shutting down future forks. Just like Oracle is feared to do. Which is an issue. Except when everyone else wants to do it. Then that's an advantage. Right?

If I sell software with anything like a typical commercial license and I decide to stop supporting it, you're SOL. With the GPL, at least you have the source and can spend money to hire someone to support it.

The GPL emphasizes code freedom over developer freedom. Take a look at Question 6 of the Commercial License page for MySQL:

Q6: What is Sun's commercial license for MySQL software?
A: Sun offers a commercial license for all of its MySQL software that is embedded in or bundled with another application.

This has been hashed out before. Monty wants to force the legitimate owner of MySQL to give up its rights to the documentation and proprietary parts of the source code so he can deploy his own commercial product using MariaDB. It's that simple. He got a big payoff when he cashed out and now he wants to double dip by getting back for free what he has already been compensated for.

He got a big payoff when he cashed out and now he wants to double dip by getting back for free what he has already been compensated for.

He could offer to purchase the proprietary parts off Sun using some of that money he got paid for selling out in the first place. Otherwise, well, it's now Sun's (and so Oracle's if Larry Ellison can stop himself from insulting the European Commission even further) and Monty will just have to console himself with looking whiny and sniveling. Or he could try hookers and blackjack.

There's an interesting thing hidden in this whole mess. . . The argument that Monty makes for why he doesn't think MySQL can survive as a strictly GPL product is that it would cut off the ability of him and others to make money selling non-GPL products which *link* to MySQL. This is based upon the notion that dynamically linking an executable with a GPL library (or linking a non-GPL library with a GPL executable) violates the GPL - which of course is an assertion the FSF likes to make. I am not a lawyer, but I've tried to research this and find an answer to the following question: does dynamic linking actually create a copyright infringement situation (i.e. a derivative work)?

From a technical standpoint, you can argue back and forth on the merits all day. But, from a standpoint of the law, so far as I've been able to tell, this is a question that has never been addressed by courts or legislation. Personally, I feel the most reasonable interpretation (from the standpoint of being consistent and, well, logical) would be that linking does *not* create a derivative work (for example, is Firefox a derivative of the Flash plugin, or Flash plugin a derivative of Firefox? Seems to me they are fairly independent works that use the mechanism of dynamic linking to work together.)

But, I also agree with other posters that Monty got a Billion bucks, and now wants to get MySQL back, and that's just kind of shady. You sell something, you get paid, it's not yours anymore. Maybe Monty can *buy it back* from Sun before they sell to Oracle - seems like that would be fair to all parties involved, and clear the way for the Oracle/Sun merger.

The Flash plugin does not merely use dynamic linking to create a derivative work of Firefox. It uses a published API for the express purpose of making such plugins, with permission granted by the original author of that API - Mosaic Communications Company.

You still haven't explained how a derivative work is created. You make an appeal to authority where you have none, period. (See, wasn't that easy?)

Copyright law governs the distribution of copies of a protected work. That's all. It doesn't govern use (although, sometimes, contracts are used as part of the licensing agreement to receive a copy for proprietary software, which can add further restrictions). But the GPL is not a contract, it is a license, and only covers the work it was applied to, and any *derivative works*.

The thing is, even though the linked library or EXE uses the API, it doesn't *contain* the API. So, the argument can be made that where there is no copying, there is no copyright violation. Put another way, there is a very logical argument that a dynamically linked work is completely separate from the executable or library it links against. Think of a book or magazine article, or even an article on a website, which directs the reader to go read something else, then come back and finish reading the text of the article. Is the article a derivative work of the work it references/links to?

Hence, even though the library or exe *depends* upon the other work, it may not be a derivative because it does not *contain* the other work (or, perhaps the courts will decide that it *is* in fact, a derivative, but no one really knows for sure). See, like I said, we can argue about this all day, but the question is still not settled in law. The law, so far as I know, *does not* address the question of dynamically linking computer programs in any statute or court precedent.

"Your argument is like saying oral sex is not sex."

No, it's not. It's nice you're so opinionated, but that makes no sense.

And you claim above, and on your blog in several contexts, that under GPL there is "no incentive to invest in development" and "direct revenue" cannot be generated, MariaDB itself lacks a viable business model and will eventually run out of funds. The only rational step is to cancel that project, unless you believe something is about to magically change, and a BSD-like license (anything but that pesky GPL!) were suddenly to allow MariaDB to de

I read the blog/petition last week. (What else is there to do at work between Christmas and New Year's?)I understand the concern - that MySQL will be an in-house "competitor" for resources to Oracle's database. However, why wouldn't they be complimentary?

Also, since a large portion of the original MySQL is OSS, then I see no reason an entity couldn't take it and create a forked product to compete in that space. This would be like Websphere and Apache co-existing. IBM goes after the corporate market and Apa

How intellectually lazy is it to say there won't be a free DB? Do I want to migrate from MySQL to PG? No. But, if the economics of MySQL become prohibitive, it's not like I'm going to kill myself over it. I'm going to move on.

If the existing solutions aren't good enough, then a new solution will emerge. That's economics. The niche is already proven by MySQL. If MySQL ceases to fill that niche, it won't be long before something else fills it.

Actually, as far as I can tell, he's not saying there won't be a free DB. He's saying that you can fork the code but not the ecosystem, which is nonsense. Look at X.org for a counterexample; if the original is not being invested in (which he claims he fears) then the fork becomes the official version. The only one of his complaints that makes sense is that Oracle might discontinue commercial licenses for MySQL. The only reason that you need a commercial license for MySQL is if you are going to distribut

Quite why you'd pick MySQL if you wanted a database to incorporate into your product instead of SQLite or PostgreSQL, I have no idea.

Shared web hosting providers offer only MySQL, not PostgreSQL. If you want PostgreSQL, that's a lot of money to move up to a virtual dedicated server.

SQLite isn't intended for high levels of concurrency; its locking is much coarser. One gets plenty of "OperationalError: database is locked". And it only recently gained support for foreign key constraints and data type constraints (by compiling them into triggers) in a newer version that hasn't yet made it into long-term-supported server operating systems

Shared web hosting providers offer only MySQL, not PostgreSQL. If you want PostgreSQL, that's a lot of money to move up to a virtual dedicated server.

Not entirely true, lots of shared web hosts also provide PostgreSQL, but completely irrelevant. I have never seen a shared web host that runs software that bundles MySQL. They may have third party software that uses MySQL via PHP, for example, but this does not need a commercial license.

SQLite isn't intended for high levels of concurrency; its locking is much coarser. One gets plenty of "OperationalError: database is locked". And it only recently gained support for foreign key constraints and data type constraints (by compiling them into triggers) in a newer version that hasn't yet made it into long-term-supported server operating systems such as CentOS 5.x and Ubuntu 8.04.

Again, you're talking about having SQLite installed already, not bundling it with your commercial code. If you need a small db, you can link SQLite directly into your app. If you need a bigger db, you can require the use

PHP is under a GPL-incompatible license. If Oracle terminates the FOSS exception for new versions of the MySQL client library, hosts won't be able to use PHP with new versions of the MySQL client library.

you use one of the permissively-licensed MySQL client libraries.

I've read posturing from MySQL AB or Sun (I don't remember which) that the permissive licenses on these client libraries are invalid because either A. the very act of using MySQL's wire protocol is considered "combining modules into one Program", B. MySQL uses patented methods licensed only for use with pro

Correct as inIf you insert "Hello world" as a date, it will not accept it, and convert it into "god known what". (This problem exists with all datatypes).If you use transactions on table that don't support it, it will not just ignore commit/rollback commands.If part of a transaction fails, a commit will not commit the rest of the transaction.

And PostgreSQL got a much better query optimizer. I still can't use views in our MySQL database because mysql keep using the wrong index. (MySQL is really bad when opti

No problems with invalid data types if you bother to RTFM and setup the config properly. (It's not hard. Just turn strict mode on.)

Strict mode is a client setting [mysql.com], which means that you're always at the mercy of applications turning it off and inserting garbage. And there's the "IGNORE" keyword to allow that too. There is no way to make a MySQL server reject all incoming bad data.

"You can change the SQL mode at runtime by using a SET [GLOBAL|SESSION] sql_mode='modes' statement to set the sql_mode system value. Setting the GLOBAL variable requires the SUPER privilege and affects the operation of all clients that connect from that time on. Setting the SESSION variable affects only the current client. Any client can change its own session sql_mode value at any time."

There are multiple "SQL Modes" that can alter correctness, source [mysql.com], but by default the DBMS doesn't try to validate input. It's pretty confusing what mode does what, and I don't care enough to figure it out, but MySQL's approach has always been Do What I Think You Mean, and if they set the new version to be ANSI compliant by default it'd break all the existing sites built on it.

(I'm claiming this qualifies as "not being correct" by virtue of the Information Principle. Granted, SQL itself violates it in many ways, but MySQL proved that you can do worse than SQL.)

PostgreSQL has a far more correct transaction model. In some ways, they're actually better than Oracle. (In Oracle, a DDL statement will start a new transaction, whereas PostgreSQL wraps DDL into a transaction.) For starters, there aren't multiple "storage engines" per table with different transactional behaviors. source, sort of. [postgresql.org]

Also, PostgreSQL, to my knowledge, correctly validates input. It's kind of hard to cite a source for this since there's just no FAQ entry "Q. How do I configure PostgreSQL to silently corrupt my data? A. You can't." But by the same token, they don't have any long-standing terrible design decisions that they have to maintain compatibility with.

You have to provide references [mysql.com] before saying something like that.:)

It was $1B in total considerations, which most likely wasn't all cash. I'm sure all of it didn't go in Monty's pocket, but I'm sure he did walk away with a pretty nice sum.

There's a thing about business though. Most places want to grow a business from nothing, to the point where it's a viable product to sell. Then they sell it. All of it. There's no looking back. It was yours, now it's not. So sorry, move on.

If I made something, and it sold for $1B, I'd be a pretty happy camper. Hell, Sabeer Bhatia [wikipedia.org] sold Hotmail in 1997 for $400M, and he was happy. Now (in a 2007 article I read), is funding new startups with the hope of making the next killer app that will be bigger than Hotmail.

I have a few things that I've done, and if someone offered me even $1M to give one up, I'd take it. I wouldn't look back. I'd smile the whole way to the bank.:)

If he wants MySQL back, tough. If Sun decides to gut it, and make the MySQL site into a porn link farm web site, and the database engine into a shell script that greps a flat file, so be it. It's theirs, and it's their decision. They could sell to Oracle, or Microsoft, or anyone they'd like.

If he *really* wants it back, he should put his effort into his new database, and don't give it up next time, even for $1B.

Seriously, you have to be a moron to take him seriously at this point. Anyone who is motivated to protect something like he claims to be in protecting MySQL does not sell off the rights to a multinational corporation, especially not one in constant turmoil like Sun has been for several years.
If he wanted to protect MySQL, what he would have done is tried to turn the company into a non-profit like Mozilla.

This three-week-old story hasn't changed a bit and neither has Monty's disingenuous hypocrisy.

If he'd wanted to retain control then why did he sell mySQL to Sun? Once that sale was completed he gave up his rights and claims. He certainly didn't have a problem with a corporation owning it in exchange for a cool billion earlier.

What Sun said they wanted to do with it is immaterial; Monty's rights to do anything more than complain vocally were terminated by his own hand the instant he signed the contract, and were made irreversible when he deposited that check.

The fact of the matter is that Oracle doesn't give more than about a shit-and-a-half about mySQL. Oracle cares about Enterprise installations and mySQL not only ain't there now, it never will be. Even Foxbase^W^H MS SQL Server spanks it 37 ways to next Tuesday in Enterprise and Data Warehousing environments.

Meanwhile, if mySQL really is and has remained open source, then it's still open, so Monty should STFU and fork it already. If not, then he himself killed it and there's no one else to blame.

Once you sell your 2CV to someone, you have no more say in what's done with the car, even if it turns out to have been bought by Top Gear and they want to blow it up. Once you take the money, you don't get to complain anymore. If it had meant that much to Monty then why did he sell?

Cake: have vs. eat.

The comment moderation on his blog is just icing on that cake -- only comments supporting poor, ickle widdle Monty's untenable position are allowed through.

And for those who still refuse to change the "evil Oracle" record, The base Oracle DB charge [oracle.com] is $350 (Std) / $950 (Ent) per user or $17,500 (Std) / $47,500 (Ent) per processor -- annually, not including required support and other charges -- Oracle doesn't give a shit about mySQL and the paltry few thousand that supporting it might bring in.

If it's really still Open Sauce and the community doesn't like what happens with it then mySQL will fork. Again. Except that it will need a new core team since the current core team has bills to pay and enjoys employment during an economic mess.

In any case, this large lump of cash is only about half what Sun or Oracle would spend on MySQL R&D in just one year, and obviously a small fraction of what would be needed to buy it back - especially after the sale to Oracle is concluded, and assumi

He apparently went through the database of everyone who had ever submitted a bug report and vacuumed up email addresses, because that's the only way he would have known me to send me his appeal. That's not stooping low: that's slithering.

Taking Monty at face value he seems to be saying Mysql was such a dynamic open source poject because of the way it was funded (a GPL codebase with a propriety licence for any one willing to pay), giving it lots of cash to develop (enabling full-time developers to work on the code base). Mysql (in Montys view) was not like Linux that had a distributed development effort behind it.
Taking him at face value this seems to be a weekness in Mysql development model, the Oracle buy out is a case in point. Not taki

So, Monty uses dual licensing to turn his open source software into a profitable company, sells that company for a billion dollars, and now he's suddenly concerned with freedom. Oracle buying MySQL may be bad, but I don't think Monty has much credibility in opposing it.

I'm sorry, but Monty sold his baby, and got well paid for it. If I could sell any program I wrote for a fraction of what he sold MySQL for, and they kicked me out of working on it, I could do any number of any other things I wanted to work on in life. Come on Monty, attack P=NP. It's not like you need a job.

It may not be as fast as MySQL, but it's certainly more robust and capable. If you look at the core of ORACLE's design (which is pretty damned good), you'll find that Postgresql has similar design principals.

When it comes to data loss, I'd rather the more robust database than the fastest one.

1. MySQL would need to be a sufficiently revenue-producing entity in order for it to sustain internal development at Oracle. What those revenue producing metrics are is impossible to know from the outside. I'm a pessimist though and would estimate whatever MySQL dev is done in-house will probably get chopped by 2/3 in order to make the revenue fit into their financing targets. That's assuming Oracle doesn't abandon it right away.

2. This $1 Billion number being thrown around is a PR number. I'd guess Monty's gotten 10's of thousands of dollars for closing the deal. Other than that his payout won't come. He won't get paid because the value of the deal is typically based on payouts based on future earnings. We know Sun couldn't turn it into a bigger revenue producer. With the change in ownership, I'm sure Oracle will renege on whatever deal he had with Sun and tell Monty to "Go pound sand. Your issue is with the Sun Officers who signed the deal, not Oracle."

3. I bet he's got a non-compete that prevents him from directly starting something. Which, Oracle would enforce while pretending about other parts of the agreement. That's why he's got this petition thing.

Monty pretended those future payouts would work, got screwed by Sun, and now he's trying to get back in the game.

What it doesn't address is the fact that if he'd really wanted to truly keep the commercial people onboard while a change of ownership is going on, the GPL was not the best license to use in the first place. But too late for that now; the MySQL community is screwed unless Oracle turn out to be a nicer owner than expected (or it gets blocked by the Commission, but I doubt Monty's pathetic whining will help there).

Except it doesn't, really. To paraphrase: "The OSS community can't succeed at managing a project without a driving corporate interest". I think there are many, many thriving examples that prove that statement to be blatantly false.

If you look a little closer at his words, you'll see that he's really saying MySQL can't succeed commercially as open source. This is, of course, true: a product that isn't commercially maintained can't be a commercial success. Fortunately, it doesn't need to be a commercial

It basically goes like this "we got paid by the folks who wanted MySQL for proprietary software to make enhancements that we could, if we wanted, include in the GPL versions".

This asymmetry - when a customer pays MySQL for a proprietary license, MySQL gets developer attention it would not get otherwise - may have distorted the free database market giving MySQL more resources than it rightfully deserved.

He has, it's called something like mariadb. Two problems: No one has ever heard of his fork, and what he really wants is the proprietary parts that were developed when mysql (the corp) was under his control.

There is a third problem. No one is going to risk their business on Monty's fork or sign over their patches because the risk is so great that he will sell every one out again. The fact that he is fully in bed with Microsoft on this makes it even more likely. Fool us once shame on you, fool us twice shame on us.

I also don't entirely understand why one would buy a proprietary license for a GPL product?

Read the GPL. It specifically prevents a variety of antisocial activities like not releasing the source code, not releasing it as a part of a non GPL program, etc.

If you can buy the same code under another license that basically has no obligations other than "send us the money", then you have... no obligations, which can be convenient primarily for anti-social folks. Dual licensing is basically the equivalent of the catholic church selling indulgences, its OK to sin, if you send us some cold hard cash.